Perhaps one of the more popular topics of discussion amongst local political insiders at present is the emergence of a raft of Facebook Fan Pages claiming to support the Canberra Liberals sub-grouping, the Menzies Group.
For those not already familiar with the internal workings of the local Liberal Party, the Menzies Group is a rebel band of Canberra Liberals formed in the wake of the bitter pre-selection stoush between Gary Humphries and Zed Seselja last year.
Consisting of remnants of the so-called ‘Disaffected Rump’, the group was established by Humphries along with loyalist and former party president, Gary Kent, in order to challenge the growing dominance of the Conservative faction within the party who had been responsible for toppling Humphries.
Humphries himself had long been recognised as a leading figure of the Moderate arm of the Canberra Liberal Party. Since losing pre-selection for the top Senate spot on his party’s ticket, Humphries has continued to openly criticise his local branch for being too conservative on social policies and for allowing the gang of Young Libs loyal to Zed to effectively wreck the joint.
Fellow Menzies Group founder and former party president, Gary Kent, who was expelled from the party shortly after the Federal Election in 2013 for his outspoken comments during the pre-selection at the beginning of the year, is widely considered to have been targeted by the Seselja-controlled Management Committee due to his continual agitation over perceived failings of corporate governance by the Conservative Zed faction. After his expulsion Kent was highly critical when asked for his opinion on the party’s electoral prospects at the 2016 election.
Shortly after Kent’s expulsion towards the end of 2013 the youth wing of the party also fractured along the Humphries/Seselja divide, when a break-away group of ANU students loyal to Kent and Humphries left the established ANU Liberal Club to form their own campus society, the ANU Progressive Liberal Students’ Association (APLSA).
The momentum generated on campus by this new society is reported to have alarmed the Seselja-controlled Management Committee so greatly that steps were undertaken immediately to block any student from the ANU suspected to be associated with the APLSA from joining the Canberra Liberals so as to ensure these young Menzians would not disrupt Pax Seselja.
Frustration over the unreasonable delays processing these new signups led to division in the new society itself when sections of the APLSA Executive more closely aligned with Humphries failed to back a senior club member aligned with Kent during an internal dispute with the Young Libs loyal to Zed.
It is widely held in party circles that the young Kentsmen who left the society over this spat are behind the formation of the new suite of Menzies Group Fan Pages that have appeared this week.
Those pages associated with this new advent in Liberal factional brawling include;
Fightback – ACT Liberal Students Coalition
Canberra Liberals Support Page
Those established Liberal Party Facebook Fan Pages opposing the new entities appear to be;
ANU Progressive Liberal Students’ Association
Australian Liberal Students Federation
Recent news from the Kaine Report Fan Page, sympathetic to the Kent aligned Menzies Group Fan Page, indicates this web-based conflict between Kent and Humphries supporters appears to have spread to wrangling over ownership of the “official” Menzies Group email address.
This story can only get more interesting!
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Oh purlllease! Can’t we stop this nonsense. We all know the identity of the maker of all the fb pages, as well as commenting under the monikers of kingslynn and powderedwig. This is truly mad behaviour, far from real commentary. No Liberals, from the right to the left, support you. Go get help! Some of us are interested in rational debate, a meeting of ideas, policy arguments and so on. Obviously you’re not. Just interested in damaging everyone to feed some neurotic need to be important. I have only one response to you – go away.
Thetruthofitall said :
No, I am not a lawyer but I do agree it is illegal to ‘hack’ emails – i.e. gain unauthorised access without a password.
I just think it is funny you are clearly so upset about it and all you can evidently do in response is post a stream of nonsensical posts about cat ladies and fish.
Thetruthofitall said :
Rant, much?
PowderedWhig said :
But you’re not a lawyer. You don’t understand the law, clearly. It is illegal to hack emails.
Honest_observer said :
Something Fishy indeed.
Honest_observer said :
Haha brilliant. And yes, it’s now confirmed that the person behind all of these pages is one and the same. It doesn’t take too much brain power to work out who it is…
Cat lady (or Cat man as the case may be) antics here. Sad really.
Does anyone know who owns the menzies, kaine and Fightback facebook pages? Who started them and maintains them??? Well I do!
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the its actually the same person!
I suspect I’ll have responses (probably contradicting each other) from the likes of PowderedWhig and KingsLynn (also the same person)
My hat goes off to this person – it takes time and dedication to maintain so many different personalities. But then I think how sad this person really is.
Anyway, I look forward to reading the various responses (from the one person).
No no it’s there they did quote the source…. in very small print.
My bad.
I think I see the point about having a cold, and resting now. Sorry folks! The picture of Menzies must have overwhelmed me.
If I’m lucky the moderators will shake their heads and wipe these last messages of mine right out, noticing I’ve tripped over myself like this. Sigh! Should never have gone near any of it…
Blast! I attributed that line there to Menzies.
Correction. It belongs to John Warhurst, SMH! Apologies to him as well as Menzies memory.
It looked like a Menzies quote on Menzies Libs facebook page. They’re not attributing these quotes at all they’re just sticking it next to their holy icon. I only looked it up when I realised subsequent quotes (also left unsourced) clearly didn’t seem to belong to him.
Ripped off!!
“The system breaks down when the larger faction slavishly rewards mediocrity when the smaller faction has put forward a candidate of clearly greater ability.” -Menzies.
Hmm… lots of things come to mind there on various levels and parties in recent history.
I’ll say one thing about Menzies, at least he didn’t try and snob off Canberra as some later leaders did. He embraced and promoted it. I expect that adds to his appeal as a hero for some local Libs today.
PowderedWhig said :
Doh.
:/
I’m still going to talk to the statue.
Postalgeek said :
Hah!!
(Well you know, there’s the statue by the lake, maybe it’s more than just a statue, dun dun daaah)
Honest_observer said :
Like you know who the New Menzies Group are then?
I noticed that about Police…odd. Something about hacking the Old Menzies Group email. I did have to laugh at the link to the AFP website from the Oldies, like really? Who does that? My understanding was the servers had to be in Australia for Police to do much about that anyways really. It is sort of like downloading copied movies, legal loop hole.
Whoever these New Menzies Groupers are they interest me. If the Libs have sicked the AFP onto them they must be serious business or completely deranged as Honest_observer thinks.
PowderedWhig said :
Nah, from stuff I’ve read on here I think that the old right wingers in the Liberal Clubs and young liberals, who crushed all the moderates back when I was involved ‘split’ at some point, had some silly feud, then there’s been some kind massive blow-up over the pre-selection mess, I don’t know. Not involved, haven’t been for years thank goodness. I just find it sad that the same thing is still going on, and while alliances have shifted and people have moved around, moved up, the endless infighting remains.
Gary Kent, Sesselja and Coe were all more or less still on the same page at the time of those stories.
It’s strange to see Kent’s supporters as ‘lefties’ though, because it was while he was president that moderates for the most part were driven out of the party, particularly younger folk.
I suppose they actual ideological right wingers were people like Coe, Zed and his ustaše stacks and particular people in the liberal club and young liberals, more than anything folks like Gary Kent just seemed to like being in charge for its own sake rather than to push any particular agenda.
I think Honest_observer is probably a uni student, maybe affiliated with the splitters, maybe a labor kid stirring the pot. This kind of stuff is kind of amusing… until you realize that it’s a major reason behind Canberra having had a Labor government for 13 years with no end in sight.
That the government is basically untouchable thanks to the dysfunction within the liberal party and fully cognizant of the fact really isn’t a good thing for Canberrans.
Just saying something smells a tad Fishy about it. Though that Kaine Report pages seems to indicate that a member of the Menzies group pre split has been reported to the police. I’m not annoyed at all. Anything with the local Laboral Party killing itself is always funny.
Honest_observer said :
The names are from Wikipedia, nick-names of 40’s gangsters. Ties in with the title of the folder, The Outfit.
I don’t think the New Menzies Group likes the Old Young Liberals any more than liking Zed.
Haha, this is so actually quite funny.
Tetranitrate said :
So the New Menzies Group has outed the Old Young Liberals and that is why Honest_observer is upset?
Very confused….
Postalgeek said :
Accepted. 🙂
Honest_observer said :
Well, they were created one day apart but I accept your point – coincidence, much? But this isn’t just one person as you seem to think as all these new pages combined have around 200 likes all up, the Canberra Libs only 100 more than that themselves (I checked). Plus there are comments on the Menzies page at least, unless that is just a crazy person talking with themselves?
I thought the names were pretty funny actually, don’t understand the significance of “The Artichoke King” but still amusing.
Being honest though, if someone put ridiculous photos of me on the net I’d probably be a bit cranky too.
PowderedWhig said :
I’ll put that misunderstanding down to my head cold.